British Council trains 1,200 teachers in Telangana

Hyderabad: The British Council has trained 1,200 teachers in government-run schools in Telangana. The three-week training programme on core skills and school leadership development concluded last week, the British Council said in a statement on Tuesday. It said 200 state government schools under control of the director of school education were chosen for the programme.

The programme will be scaled to other schools across the state only after the successful conclusion of this pilot, the statement added. A total of 1,000 teachers underwent the core skills training in critical thinking and problem solving, including a one-day introduction to core skills for teachers. As many as 200 head teachers underwent the school leadership development programme in four modules — building leadership capacity, creating and communicating a vision, leading and managing change, building and sustaining effective teams.

“The British Council is committed to supporting teachers improve learning outcomes for young people in India and Britain and across the world. We hope that the training has helped them enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills, improve their leadership qualities and create great learning experiences,” said Mei-kwei Barker, Director, British Council South India. Speaking at the valedictory ceremony, Director of School Education G. Kishan said the approach to universalise education by community-ownership of the school system was a response to the demand for quality education.

“This can be accomplished by embedding core skills in the curriculum. I am confident that this will be achieved through British Council capacity building workshop for teachers and leaders,” he said. The British Council is Britain’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. Connecting classrooms is a global education programme for schools, designed to help young people become globally aware and competitive in the 21st century. The new programme, running from 2015-2018, will build the capacity of 45,000 teachers, 12,000 school leaders and policy makers worldwide to support them in integrating a range of core skills into the curriculum. –IANS